


Stepping Away

by szynka2496



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1673153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/szynka2496/pseuds/szynka2496
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am never going to forget the stare I felt on my back when I left the exhibition that day. Contains CATWS Spoiler, One Shot (so far)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stepping Away

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance for my grammar and spelling mistakes, English is not my first language.  
> This One Shot is also uploaded on my FF.net account under the same username (szynka2496).  
> It's a writing experiment and I like how it turned out! Maybe there will come more chapters, maybe not ;P

... And one day, after James Buchanan Barnes returned from his walk through Central Park, we were sitting in _Café Mischief_. The café was located in Manhattan just few blocks away from my apartment. Not many people knew about this place, so there were never a lot of customers, which was fine by me. I did not like crowded places anyway, and I doubt James like it either.

I should be working on a college application, but today I was having one of those days were I simply wasn’t able to do anything useful, or at least finish something I started. The application lied half written on my kitchen table, and it will most likely stay this way for the rest of the day. Or perhaps even longer, until I was motivated enough to continue writing.

James Barnes sat across of me, his coffee untouched. Pure black coffee, the taste very bitter. He preferred it this way, and also explained that he did not like milk, to which I once jokingly asked whether he was lactose intolerant or not. The only reply I received was a glare. I was a tea person and always added at least three spoon of sugar. Sometimes people just needed sweet things in life.

That’s how our usually coffee time routine looked like: We arrive, walk to our seat, someone order and someone sits there and wait. He knew I loved to drink Earl Grey tea with a lot of sugar, I knew he always ordered a large sized black coffee without sugar. Our usual table consisted of two dark green armchairs and a brown wood table pushed against a wall. Black-white photographs hung on the wall, each one presenting different life’s in New York City. In this corner we weren’t that visible to people’s eyes, but we had a good view on everybody else. James liked to watch people, not in some creepy, I’m-watching-all-your-single-moves-so-I-can-calculate-when-it’s-the-best-to-assassinate-you-way. His blue-green eyes always followed the movements outside the little café. Sometimes he’d furrow his brows in confusion, like there was an unsolvable riddle standing in front of him. Other times, his eyes would light up, like he recognized something – or he solved the riddle.

I’d usually just sit there, and try to follow his gaze, figuring out what he had his eyes set on. Then I’d point it out, and he’d either confirm or deny it. Whenever I got it right, it made me feel proud of myself, because I managed to spot his ‘target’, James sometimes wore a small smile at my small weird antics. This has become some sort of game between us.

Conversations that happened between us were always something that meant a lot to me. It was a sign he trusted me – more or less – and was comfortable around me. James rarely talked to someone, it even took Steve Rogers a long time to get him speak more than three sentences to him. It pained Steve a lot to see his old pal refusing to talk to him, but Rogers respected his privacy. Barnes needed time to adjust to his new surroundings and regain his memories back. He may have forgotten about his life before he became the Winter Soldier, but the memories themselves would never fade away. They were simply locked away in the deepest and darkest corner of his mind, waiting to be awakened again.

Or I was playing way too much _Kingdom Hearts_ for my own good.

oOoOoOo

When shortly after the three Helicarriers were destroyed – and SHIELD disbanded – HYDRA went off radar. It seemed like everything happened so fast HYDRA did not have any time to retrieve one of their most prized experiment: The Winter Soldier.

Brainwashed and trained to be one of the most skilled and deadly assassin, the existence of the Winter Soldier was something a lot of organizations questioned. No one knew where he came from; no one knew why he did what he does. One day in history he just appeared on Earth’s surface and throughout history assassinated lot of targets. According to witnesses – if there were few – he always looked the same. Not that anyone has seen his face, but appearance wise he was always wearing the same outfit. And this throughout the last seventy years.

Until one day Steve Rogers engaged into a combat battle with him and managed to knock that mouth piece away from his face. But what he saw was something he thought he’d never see again in his life.

The Winter Soldier was his best friend James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes.

Bucky didn’t know – or rather remembered – Steve.

I visited Steve Rogers in the hospital after the whole showdown in Washington DC, he told me about it. For good one and half year he lived next door, we were neighbors. And then he had to move to DC because of work. But I saw on TV what was happening there. On the one hand, I was glad I was in New York safe and sound; on the other hand I worried for the lives of thousands of other people.

Reminiscing about the times when we were still neighbors, I recalled when Steve told me about his life before he became the Super Soldier. Before everything he was just a kid from Brooklyn, and orphan. He talked a lot about is best friend ‘Bucky’, whom he knew since he was twelve. Old stories and funny memories were shared, he always told them with a distance look in his eyes, like everything just happened yesterday. But sometimes it made him sad to think about those times. Most of his friends were dead and he wasn’t there. He missed seventy years of his life and he had a lot to catch up. He was the man out of time.

No, he was _a_ man out of time.

Because James Barnes was a man out of time too.

On my last day in Washington DC I visited the Smithsonian exhibition. While listening to Steve stories with curiosity and joy, it’s always nice to be able to have few things visualized in front of your eyes. In this case, the museum showed old costumes, copy of file and videos of Captain America, his life before and the Howling Command. What caught my interest was the small section dedicated to Bucky Barnes. It consisted of three walls. On the left side photos and pictures showed him and his friends either performing their duty or as a normal man, sitting in a bar with a mug of beer sometimes even with one or two women at his side. The right side showed few copies of documents, like his medical records, or his application for joining the army, or the report if him being KIA.

James Barne’s face was plastered over the wall in the middle, with a text dedicated to him.

He was Steve Roger’s best friend.

He fought beside him with the Howling Command.

He was the only one to die.

His body was never found though.

That’s because he was still alive.

The photos represented him as a quite handsome man in his mid-twenties. Unshaved and unkempt, but a confident look on his face. And that smile, it could melt the heart of thousands of young girls. It made me wonder how many women threw them at him.

I wasn’t sure what I should think about the whole Bucky-is-alive-but-he’s-the-Winter-Soldier situation. Of course I was happy for Steve that his best buddy was alive, but then again, it meant we had another living fossil on the loose. And after Washington DC no one knew where the Winter Soldier went, or what happened to him.

I didn’t need to ask what Steve planned after SHIELD’s fall, because the answer was right in front of me: He was going to look for Barnes. The bond Steve shared with Bucky was something I would probably never understand myself – I didn’t have such a person in my life to share such a bond. While I do get along with the super heroes, I wouldn’t see them as the closest friend I had. Circumstances in life – Manhattan alien invasion to me more specific – brought them into my life, or brought me into their lives.

One thing I did not like about the Smithsonian exhibition was the crowds of people, standing in front of one exhibit and gawking at it for an unnecessary long time. I literally had to squeeze my through the people just to see Steve’s old bike. But surprisingly not many people were interested in the James Barnes section – it was just me and someone else absorbing the information on the wall.

It didn’t take me longer than ten minutes to read through everything, before I received a call from Steve.

“HelloSteve - IamattheSmithsonian – flightisateighto’clockintheevening – backtoNewYork – schoolandallthatjazz – noI’llbefine – Natashawilltakemetotheairport – seeyousoon, bye.”

I am never going to forget the stare I felt on my back when I left the exhibition that day.


End file.
